Federal Court rejects Indigenous heritage claim against Santos gas pipeline

Gas producer Santos is free to install a vital gas pipeline from its $5.5 billion Barossa gas pipeline after the Federal Court rejected claims it could damage Indigenous cultural heritage.

On Monday, Justice Natalie Charlesworth lifted an injunction – which she had imposed in early November and revised two weeks later – on laying the pipeline to allow work in the northernmost part of the route away from the Tiwi Islands.

In her judgment, Charlesworth said differing accounts from witnesses from the Jikilaruwu, Munupi and Malawu people led her to conclude the beliefs and customs that formed the intangible cultural heritage the applicants claimed could be damaged by the pipeline were not broadly accepted within their communities.

Charlesworth said there was a “lack of integrity” in some aspects of an exercise that married science and traditional belief in evidence to show there was an ancient lake near the pipeline route, undermining her confidence in the existence of such a lake.

Concerns over tangible cultural heritage along the pipeline route from the time the area was not underwater were rejected by Charlesworth, who found there was a negligible chance of archaeological remains.

The Barossa project has been dogged by legal challenges based on concerns over protecting Indigenous culture.

In September 2022, the Federal Court found the Adelaide-based company had not adequately consulted traditional owners – led by Tiwi Islander Dennis Tipakalippa – before submitting its plans to the offshore environment regulator NOPSEMA and ordered it to stop drilling for gas at Barossa.

The decision threw the offshore oil and gas sector into turmoil as companies withdrew their plans lodged with the regulator and launched new rounds of consultation to ensure the plans could withstand a similar legal appeal.

After a series of legal hearings, NOPSEMA in December accepted Santos’ revised plan for drilling at Barossa and, according to the regulator’s website, the work will commence in January.

Despite the legal challenges, Santos as recently as October said the key project remained on track to start production in the first half of 2025 within the budget of $US3.7 billion ($5.5 billion).

The Barossa field will supply gas to Santos’s Darwin liquefied natural gas plant that shut down in late 2023 when the gas supply from the Bayu-Undan field in Timor-Leste waters was exhausted.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/federal-court-rejects-indigenous-heritage-claim-against-santos-gas-pipeline-20240115-p5exam.html

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‘F’ for Failing to Train Our Future Teachers Properly

The Australian education system is in crisis. It is failing at a most basic level, which is to teach young Australians how to read and write.

All you have to do is look at this year’s NAPLAN results to see how bad things really are in Australian schools.

One-in-three Australian students are not meeting the basic standards of numeracy and literacy. In contrast, just 15 percent of students are exceeding expectations.

The majority of Australia’s Year 9 students use punctuation at a Year 3 level. To put that into perspective, 15-year-old teenagers have the writing ability of 8-year-olds.

And the majority of those teenagers are struggling to be able to put a sentence together, let alone insert a comma or an apostrophe correctly.

As adults, these Australians will struggle to get jobs or manage their finances. It renders them unable to perform simple tasks such as accurately filling out vital forms, following maps, or reading instructions on a packet of medication. An illiterate and innumerate society is a non-functioning society.

These are truly shocking statistics. And it’s not happening because of a lack of funding for schools.

Every single Australian should be asking why, given state and federal governments are throwing more money than ever at the problem, the 2023 NAPLAN results reveal a system in steady decline.

Each year, all levels of government spend around $120 billion on education.

Australians should know that one of the central causes of this decline is what future teachers are being taught during their training at university.

A new report by the Institute of Public Affairs, “Who teaches the teachers?” has found that—instead of being taught how to master core academic curriculum such as reading, writing, mathematics, history, and science—teachers are being trained by their university lecturers to be experts in identity politics, critical race theory, radical gender theory, and sustainability.

The teaching of woke ideology accounts for 31 percent of all teaching subjects, which is equivalent to one-and-a-quarter years of a four-year Bachelor of Education degree. Meanwhile, fewer than 1-in-10 teaching subjects are focused on literacy and numeracy.

Future teachers are spending far more time talking about gender fluidity, climate change, and how racist Australia is, than they are things like phonics, mathematics, and grammar. It is no wonder that young Australians are hopelessly lacking in basic skills but very good at going to protests.

Universities are not only failing to equip teaching graduates with the knowledge and skills required to effectively teach core curriculum subjects, but they have replaced core skills and knowledge with woke ideology and political activism, which in turn produces legions of poorly educated child activists. And it looks like a lot of trainee teachers do not want this either.

Currently, the average completion rate for students in a teaching degree at universities is 50 percent, while the average attrition rate across all courses is 17 percent. Moreover, 20 percent leave the profession in their first three years as a teacher.

The system is clearly failing both trainee teachers and the students they go on to teach. It is a system in urgent need of reform.

Under the federal government’s “back to basics” plan, there will be a new accreditation regime for teaching degrees.

This means that it will be mandatory for universities to instruct trainee teachers in evidence-based reading, writing, arithmetic, and classroom management practices, based on the proven educational science about what works best to promote student learning.

While the “back to basics” concept is a step in the right direction, it will not solve the related problem of teachers being schooled in woke ideology.

As long as these subjects continue to dominate teaching degrees, the nation’s teachers will continue to be ill-prepared for the classroom.

This does a disservice both to them and their future students.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/f-for-failing-to-train-our-future-teachers-properly-5550003

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Government burdens on our primary industries

Last year was a challenging one for our primary industries, with more and more interventions from the government, and many of those living in the city not understanding the import or cost of these interventions.

In agriculture, it’s no longer dangerous fires, droughts and floods that are the main problem, it is the man-made problems. Government-made ones.

Onerous regulations restrict farmers from being able to protect their families, staff, pets, homes and investment from bushfires because governments dictate firebreaks of inadequate dimensions.

Governments also dictate the building of vast tracts of solar panels, wind farms, and transmission lines to traverse farming land. It is estimated by the IPA that one-third of prime agricultural land could be at risk. What do governments and the media think this will do to the price and availability of fresh food? Perhaps some of these renewable eyesores could be placed in city parks, rivers and on city beaches to give inner-city folk a better idea of their visual and physical impact; but of course there’s no chance of that happening because that’s where the majority of voters live.

And although farmers are upset, and frightened by the fire risks posed by solar panels, and don’t like the bird-killing wind turbines being placed on their properties, this is just the prelude to the impossible financial burden awaiting them under net-zero policies. For a typical outback station to replace, for instance, all its existing vehicles with electric vehicles (EVs) will cost the owner between approximately $10.4 and $11.5 million, not to mention whatever compliance fines may be levied. Some of the EVs required haven’t even been produced yet.

But there’s more. If your station has, say, fifty windmills, which are essential to get the daily water that stock need to survive, and you are required to change those to solar pumps at $70,000 a pop, that’s another $3.5 million.

And it doesn’t stop there. Stations run on diesel-fuelled generators, so if you change them to solar panels you will also require expensive giant batteries. And as farmers well know, the sun doesn’t shine at night.

How many farms and stations will be able to pay for all this? How many farmers and pastoralists could afford net-zero policies, without a mining company in their back pocket?

Blind Freddie can see, all such costs and more of net zero would need to be passed onto city folk.

Will inner-city voters still be happy when forced to eat inferior quality food coming from overseas that is not as fresh as they have long been used to, and not produced with our clean air and water, nor to our high environmental and health standards?

When primary industries are forced to carry onerous government burdens, Blind Freddie knows the costs must be passed on to consumers. In the case of local councils, higher costs ultimately mean higher rents and fewer services.

Then there’s payroll tax. If you think it doesn’t affect you, that it’s just something businesses pay, well guess what? As Blind Freddie knows, that cost is also passed on to you.

And even if you don’t own a car, the excise on fuel adds to inner-city costs because everything consumed requires transportation, and that requires fuel. It’s hard to think of anything that isn’t touched by the government’s fuel excise. Committing to abolishing this ‘nasty tax’ would help immensely with the rising costs of living.

Australians are dealing with the rising cost of food, energy, fuel, housing and so much more. Yet too often, rather than helping to alleviate these pressures, government policies add to them.

Take our pensioners, the vast majority of whom are sadly going through distressing times. How we can do this to our elderly is beyond me. They should be allowed to work if they want to, and as often as they want to, without upper limits on hours, and without onerous, complicated paperwork, and discriminatory rates of tax imposed on them simply for trying to improve their living standards.

My blood boils that our veterans, who have served our country, many risking their lives, are also faced with complicated paperwork, and unfair discriminatory taxes if they work hours beyond what is okayed by the Canberra bureaucracy. It means that many live in poverty, even homelessness, thanks to government restrictions on how long they can work.

As for our uni students, they need real work to build up experience and so they can save money to buy a safer car, or put towards a home. Students should also be permitted to work as many hours as they wish.

Why, with a worker shortage crisis, record debt, and rising living costs, can Blind Freddie see what should be permitted, but our government cannot?

We need policies that help Australians. We need policies that make investment in our country worthwhile. If we have any interest in maintaining our living standards we should be doing what other countries do and roll out the red carpet for investment. Expensive government-funded trade trips and trade personnel located overseas are a waste of money unless governments cut the costs and delays caused by government red tape. And Blind Freddie can see that the forcing the overburdened taxpayer to fund lawfare does nothing to encourage investment.

The old but true law of supply and demand still applies; if you decrease the supply of a commodity, such as gas, while demand remains the same or increases, it’s inevitable that prices will increase. The way to reverse this is not by government intervention, but in fact the opposite – by removing red tape and negative policies and encouraging the investment needed to bring on more supply. It’s time for common sense.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/blind-freddie-sees-what-governments-cannot/

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Arguing with the woke left: Like wrestling an eel

Take the gender pay gap. The broadly held assumption is that this is wrong and needs to be reduced. The argument then leaps into proposals for various misguided means of reducing the pay gap. Examples include imposed pay hikes for female-intensive occupations or forcing companies to reveal information about their gender pay gaps.

The more legitimate way of thinking about this issue is to ask why the gender pay gap, using the best measurement possible, exists, and why it persists. The next step is to see if the factors that typically influence earnings can explain the gap. These include education, qualifications, occupation, industry, hours of work, job tenure, and the like. Note that we are in the positive realm.

After taking these factors into account, it turns out that the residual gender pay gap can be almost totally explained by the existence of ‘greedy jobs’ that require long and unpredictable hours and often extensive travel.

Women typically shy away from greedy jobs. The pay gap is not about systemic discrimination according to the evidence. Indeed, Claudia Goldin of Harvard was awarded the Nobel Prize last year for this insight and her empirical research.

Now unless we can do away with greedy jobs – and that seems unlikely although a degree of job redesign is possible – the gender pay gap is likely to continue notwithstanding the bleatings of the woke left and many gormless politicians. Costly, ineffective policies are an inevitable consequence of the failure to accept the evidence.

But let me return to the direction of argument used by the woke left when they know they are beaten on facts and logic. One typical accusation is to label the opponent in a debate as ‘alt-right’ or ‘far right’. This conjures up notions of white supremacy, even the KKK. The idea is that if the label can be made to stick, then no one need pay any further attention to the points being made by the dubious contrarian.

But here’s the thing: when this alt-right/far right tagline is ignored, you will often find that what is being proposed is actually sensible stuff, common sense in most instances. Pointing out the dangers of the rapid exit of coal-fired power plants and their replacement with highly subsidised intermittent, land-gobbling energy is hardly alt-right. It’s pointing out the bleeding obvious.

Another tactic of the woke left is to accuse opponents of engaging in conspiracy theories. The idea is that rational people don’t believe in conspiracies and so any line of argument put forward by conspiracists should be immediately rejected.

We saw this in relation to the Covid vaccines that were rapidly developed. It simply makes sense to point out that there was no long-term evaluation of the vaccines and there could always be unforeseen risks, such as serious adverse reactions.

The fact that it became clear very quickly that the vaccines had no measurable impact on population transmission had to be concealed by the advocates of vaccine mandates. Accusing anyone who pointed this out of being a conspiracist was a handy way of achieving this. When dictatorial public health officials, working hand-in-glove with Big Pharma and self-serving politicians, are in charge, this is the puerile level to which debate can quickly descend.

Another more subtle manipulation of debate is to suggest that opponents are mere populists and therefore their arguments should be dismissed. According to elite opinion, anything that smacks of populism must be rejected.

Of course, this rather begs the question of what is populism. It can’t just be something that is popular. After all, politicians can never get elected if they simply propose a suite of policies that are deeply unpopular. The underlying message seems to be that if something appeals to a large number of relatively uneducated people, this is populism and, by definition, is bad.

We saw this argument being used in overdrive during the Trump years in which many of his policies were decried as mere populism. But surely ‘draining the swamp’ was essentially a good idea; standing up to China made geo-strategic and economic sense; and attempting to staunch the flow of illegal immigrants was much needed.

Talking about immigration, many on the left are in favour of completely open borders and essentially disapprove of any initiatives to control the flow of migrants. To counter any alternative points of view, it is common for accusations of xenophobia and racism to be thrown about.

In other words, impugn the character of those making the case for limiting immigration, be it legal or illegal, and hope this is a winning device in the argument. Of course, it’s also necessary to ignore the preferences of the citizens, but the populist point can be made in this context.

The short-hand accusation of labelling something as neo-liberalism or trickle-down economics is often used as a device in debates about economic policy. The idea is that those who disagree with the woke left policy prescriptions of higher government spending and taxes as well as more government regulation and intervention should just be dismissed because they are using discredited theories.

It’s not clear what the proponents mean by these terms – is neo-liberalism just standard economic theory? – but the intent again is to query the standing of those who make alternative arguments. It’s so much easier than debating the main points. There is always the fear that, head-to-head, it is entirely possible that the contest would be lost.

Arguing with the woke left does seem akin to wrestling an eel. But the reality is that when opponents resort to fatuous tactics which are not really any more than name-calling, you know that you are on the winning side. If that’s all they’ve got, sticking to the theory and empirical evidence will always be a winning formula in the long run.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/arguing-with-the-woke-left/ ?

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Councillor Fights to Scrap Indigenous Ceremonies Before Council Meetings

Cumberland City councillor and former mayor, Steve Christou, has pledged to put a stop to Aboriginal “Welcome to Country“ Indigenous ceremonies if his party gains a majority in September’s council elections.

His stance has been met with criticism, however, from the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, who say he has “politicised the issue in the hope of winning votes.”

Council CEO Yuseph Deen said, “The candidate has got bigger issues to worry about if that is the case, when his point of difference to other candidates is race-based, rather than what positive initiatives he can bring to the Cumberland City Council"—located in western Sydney.

But Mr. Christou is standing firm, saying he sees the ceremony as alienating to new migrants to Australia. “It ’s been so overdone and watered down, it’s lost its significance,” he told The Epoch Times.

“Originally, the majority of Australians accepted the fact that there might be a ‘Welcome to Country,’ at say, a major event [like] a citizenship ceremony.

“But now they’re being turned around, like confetti shoved down everybody’s throats. And when we get a Welcome to Country speaker that says this land was stolen ... that just that causes division.

He says his party, known as Our Local Community, want “something a bit more meaningful, and which is inclusive of everybody

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/councillor-fights-to-scrap-indigenous-ceremonies-before-council-meetings-5563779

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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